Russia’s Vladimir Putin denies he owns opulent Black Sea palace

AS OPPOSITION URGE MORE PROTESTS

Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed claims by opposition leader Alexei Navalny that he owns a luxury property on the Black Sea worth US$1.35 billion, as the opposition urged fresh nationwide demonstrations. Courts around Russia started handing down short jail sentences to demonstrators arrested during nationwide opposition rallies last weekend, while the foreign ministry accused US diplomats of encouraging Russians to join the protests.

Navalny’s aides urged his supporters to take to the streets again next Sunday ahead of a court case that could see Russia’s most prominent Kremlin critic put behind bars for more than three years.

The 44-year-old campaigner was detained just over a week ago when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had been recuperating from exposure to a Soviet-designed toxin.

He called on his supporters in dozens of cities to rally last weekend and released a two-hour investigation into the palatial seaside property to spur allies to demonstrate.

The rallies saw a record number of arrests, and Putin on Monday denied having anything to do with the property in Navalny’s video, which has now been watched 86 million times.

“Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did,” Putin said during a video call with Russian students.

Navalny’s report - his most-watched anti-corruption probe by far - claims the property is worth US$1.35 billion and features everything from an underground ice rink to a casino.

Leonid Volkov, a key aide to the Kremlin critic, urged Russians to take to the streets again on January 31 “or fNavalny’s freedom, for freedom for all, and for justice”.

Saturday’s rallies saw clashes between police and protesters, 3,700 of whom were detained according to the OVD-Info monitoring group.

Putin said on Monday that Russian citizens have the right to express themselves but that they must do so “within the framework of the law”.

Putin also said minors should not be encouraged to join the rallies, referring to a claim repeated by authorities that the opposition had encouraged young people to protest.

“That’s what terrorists do. They put women and children in front of themselves,” Putin said.

Political analyst Alexei Zakharov, who cited polls conducted at Moscow’s rally, said on Facebook that demonstrators were on average 31-years-old, while only 10 per cent of participants were 18 or younger.

The Russian foreign ministry on Monday repeated claims that US diplomats had encouraged Russians to participate in the rallies, and said it had lodged a “strong protest” with the American ambassador.

That allegation followed earlier claims by the Kremlin that the US embassy was interfering in Russian affairs by publishing protest routes ahead of the rallies.

An embassy spokeswoman said that it was “routine practice” for diplomatic missions to issue safety messages to their citizens abroad.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow would probe American tech companies over “interference” related to the demonstrations.

Ahead of the rallies, Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor ordered social media platforms including YouTube and Instagram to delete calls for demonstrations posted on their platforms.

Navalny’s arrest was met with widespread condemnation in the West, with the European Union saying it was considering new sanctions on Russia - although EU ministers decided at a meeting Monday that this was “premature”, according to one European diplomat.

That allegation followed earlier claims by the Kremlin that the US embassy was interfering in Russian affairs by publishing protest routes ahead of the rallies.

An embassy spokeswoman said that it was “routine practice” for diplomatic missions to issue safety messages to their citizens abroad.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow would probe American tech companies over “interference” related to the demonstrations.

Ahead of the rallies, Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor ordered social media platforms including YouTube and Instagram to delete calls for demonstrations posted on their platforms.

Navalny’s arrest was met with widespread condemnation in the West, with the European Union saying it was considering new sanctions on Russia - although EU ministers decided at a meeting Monday that this was “premature”, according to one European diplomat.

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'Free speech for presidents' by Philip Dickens

by Philip Dickens Comment, on the FREEDOM PRESS WEBSITE Jan 12th

Editorial Note: We are publishing below a post by Philip Dickens from the anarchist Freedom Website. In it Phil Dickens mocks the blog 'Spiked' edited by Brendan O'Neill as representing the 'reactionary fringes of the mainstream discourse'. It is worth noting that not only the American Civil Liberties Union has warned about the unchecked power of platforms like Twitter and Facebook to remove people from the forum of everyday discourse. I say 'everday discourse', but of course many people, including me, do not use either.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Mr. Dickens sneeringly jumps up and down announcing: 'Predictably, this led to #thisis1984 trending on Twitter, with the right decrying the ban as Orwellian.'

And yet Dickens is right to argue that there is a 'legitimate debate about the impact of corporations on freedom of speech and expression, but it doesn’t rest on the right of a US President to Tweet'.

Nor is this a novel problem of the internet era. Indeed, Orwell noted in 1946 in his essay 'The Prevention of Literature' that: 'Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his [sic] integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the conceration of the press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of monopoly on radio and the films, the unwillingness of the public to spend money on books, making it necessary for nealy every writer to earn part of his living by hack work, the encroachment of official bodies like the Ministry of Information and the British Council, which help the writer to keep alive but also waste his time and dictate his opinions... Everything in our age conspires to turn the writer, and every other kind of artist as well, into a minor official, working on themes handed to him from above and never telling the whole of the truth.'

Dickens knows all of this, as he himself suffers from earning his living as a tax inspector. At one time the left were the main advocates of free speech, but because of the cancel culture campaigns etc. this ground as the novelist Margaret Atwood has recently argued, has been largely surrendered to the right. The FREEDOM WEBSITE despite its anarchist pretentions has in the last two decades fallen short as a defender of liberty or free speech; its current editor in 2016 even put up a blacklist of four people he didn't like who had the audacity to apply for positions on the FRIENDS of FREEDOM PRESS committee. Dickes approach suffers from being too simplistic as shown were he writes that 'private ownership by the capitalist class is protected from dissent by the state and its monopoly on violence.' Dividing politics into a left / right dichotomy is of questionable application today, especially in relation to Trump who was generally recognised to be an unconventional president.

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'FREE SPEECH for PRESIDENTS' by Philip Dickens

FOLLOWING the short-lived occupation of the US Capitol building, Twitter and a number of other social media platforms have banned US President Donald Trump.

Predictably, this led to #thisis1984 trending on Twitter, with the right decrying the ban as Orwellian. Brendan O’Neill of Sp!ked – the publication which leads the advance of terrible opinions from the reactionary fringes into the mainstream discourse – declared this “a chilling sign of tyranny to come.” This is, he says, “a very significant turning point in the politics and culture of the Western world” as it sees “exceptionally wealthy and aloof elites determining which elected politicians may engage in online discussion.”

This isn’t a position confined to the right, however. A member of the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative counsel has said that “it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier.”

There’s a legitimate debate about the impact of corporations on freedom of speech and expression, but it doesn’t rest on the right of a US President to Tweet.

Yes, a few companies in Silicon Valley control the whole social media landscape and have undue influence as a result. That’s not a unique or historically unprecedented phenomenon though: it reflects the balance of power and ownership in both the traditional media and physical spaces.

What O’Neill calls the “powerful, unaccountable oligarchies of the internet era” are mirrors of the media barons who dominate print and broadcast news. However, the almost unmoderated right of reply that exists in social media is absent, and instead the discourse both reflects and directs the ‘Overton Window’ of acceptable opinion – with what is acceptable defined not by popular or democratic will but by who owns the press and by the fact that it doesn’t sell news to an audience but an audience to advertisers. In other words, just as O’Neill says tech companies are doing, media owners and advertisers have long been “exploiting their monopolistic power to dictate what political opinions it is acceptable to hold and express.”

In physical spaces, from the workplace to the public square, private ownership by the capitalist class is protected from dissent by the state and its monopoly on violence. Anti-strike legislation limits the extent to which workers can stand up to their bosses, whilst a tangle of laws serve to restrict the conduct of protests and criminalise protesters in a myriad of ways.

The media commentators who see unprecedented totalitarianism in Trump’s Twitter ban have no qualms over any of the above. Instead, they view any kickback against that monopolisation of discourse as the real threat to free speech. This is why they have been vocal in opposition to the Stop Funding Hate campaign, which seeks to redirect advertising influence towards making (for example) media demonisation of migrants unprofitable. It is why all of the furore around ‘cancel culture’ is centred on the defence of those with a considerable platform and privilege from any consequences for their words yet they will say nothing when Julia Hartley-Brewer, a member of the Free Speech Union’s PR/Media advisory council, threatening to get a man sacked for challenging her Covid-denying propaganda against the NHS.

In other words, they’re concerned about defending the free speech of the powerful from efforts by the powerless to resist that through free association and action.

So it is with Twitter. The platform is genuinely guilty of arbitrary and questionable banning decisions – more often than not against small voices who challenge the powerful or the genuinely dangerous. That, under immense pressure, it is occasionally forced to follow its own rules and look at safeguarding and risks of incitement isn’t the problem. Rather, the fact that under other circumstances the power and influence those accounts hold would protect it and see instead the less influential who challenge them banned is the problem here.

Private monopolisation of what should be public spaces is the key issue. Within that, the fact that (just like in real life) the powerful are protected from the consequences of their actions except in the most extreme circumstances is the crucial point.

Anarchists recognise that genuine liberty and equality go hand in hand, and that we cannot have either if we fail to address questions of power.

Alongside formal hierarchies, such as those embedded in the institutions of the state and capital, this includes invisible hierarchies that inevitably grow out of supposedly ‘structureless’ environs. In a group without a formal leadership, those with the most confidence and the loudest voices dominate with no democracy to rein them in. In a meeting without a chairperson, the most brash can speak unhindered – but the consequence is that others in turn are silenced.

That’s why our primary concern isn’t the right of US President to a massive platform and untold influence, including the ability to incite (amateurish, incompetent) coup attempts.

Those whose only demand is that those already with a platform and influence are never deprived of that do not stand for free speech. They stand in defence of a fundamentally unjust status quo in which free expression is directly linked to power.

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Hokey Cokey on Corbyn Friend's Facebook Page

Curious Corbynite Dance as Site Censor's Stefan Cholewka

  I put my right hand in, 

I put my right hand out,

In out, in out. 

 

shake it all about.

THE Hokey Cokey* is a famous traditional campfire song which has recently been adopted as method of punishment by the Rochdale Friends of Jeremy Corbyn Facebook page to confuse readers as to its method of administration of the site.  It follows critical allusions about the self-confessed fraud, the now Rochdale councillor Faisal Rana, who breached electoral law when he obtained and used postal votes illegally.  It was widely reported at the time that he had accepted a police caution, but the Rochdale Labour Party continued to back him, as do other useful idiots.  

Recently Stefan Cholewka, Secretary of Rochdale Trade Union Council, in a personal capacity posted some links critical of Cllr. Rana's historic conduct on the Jeremy Corbyn Facebook page.  Owing to this act Sam O'Brien, a local trade union activist, then threaten to withdraw from membership of the Facebook page if Stefan's comments remained up.  

One of the Facebook administrators then obediently removed Stefan's comments, but also seemingly someone blocked Stefan from both access and posting on the site.  Then suddenly, earlier this week, he was readmitted and began posting items.  Yet within 24-hours of his readmission to the Facebook page he reported that he was out again.

'In out, in out. 

 

shake it all about.'

 

This seems to be the politics of the famous Hokey Cokey music hall dance and suggests to us that the fall of the Red Wall in the North of England may not be temporary event, as it points to a continuing degeneration in the psychology of those elements like Sam O'Brien, who seemed to think that they have the 'key to the universe'.  It is the mentality of what the French call the idée fixe, which among some elements of the Anglo-Saxon left seems to be evolving into monomania.

If they do not get a grip sites like Rochdale's Friends of Jeremy Corbyn Facebook page will become impoverished: mere megaphones bleating like of sheep. 

* The Hokey Cokey (United Kingdom and the Caribbean) or Hokey Pokey (United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland and Israel)^[1] is a famous, popular campfire song and participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It originates in a British folk dance, with variants attested as early as 1826. The song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hall song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in the UK. The song became a chart hit twice in the 1980s. The first UK hit was by The Snowmen, which peaked at UK No. 18 in 1981.

Recolonising Africa?

by Les May

A FEW hours after war was declared at 11 p.m. on 4 August 1914, the paddle driven cable laying ship Alert was sent out from Dover on a planned mission to drag for, and cut, the five German cables in the English Channel which linked to the rest of the world.   The idea was to force German communications on to radio where they could be intercepted more easily and so give British codebreakers a better chance of gaining useful information.

Although they may seem old and outdated undersea cables, now having the benefit of fibre optic technology, still carry the majority of the Internet traffic around the world.   The amount of Internet traffic which a cable can carry at any one time is called its ‘bandwidth’.  The more people who want to use the Internet at any one time, the more bandwidth is necessary.  Compared with America, Asia and Europe the cables linking Africa to the rest of the world are seriously lacking in bandwidth.

Whether changing this situation is more important than improving access to clean water and sanitation, and improving access to health care, is a moot point, though in my book I regard these as a ‘human right’.  But earlier today I heard two Africans, one in Ethiopia and one in South Africa claiming that access to the Internet was itself a human right. (Remember how six months ago Corbyn was laughed at when he said a Labour government would promote free Internet access?)

Within Africa mobile phones and the Internet have expanded what people can do even in areas where not everyone has access to an electricity supply. Some enterprising individuals allow mobile phone owners to recharge their device for a small sum. Potentially there is a huge unsatisfied market in Africa. Unsurprisingly this has attracted the attention of cash rich multi-national businesses.

Facebook and Google are intending to team up to lay 37,000 kilometres of fibre optic cable to link African countries with the rest of the world.  The Chinese company Huawei, Microsoft, like Facebook and Google a USA based company and the Norwegian company Opera, (see below), also have projects targeting Africa. Should we be worried about this? Should Africans be worried?

Huawei’s interest seems clear. It supplies the hardware which makes systems run. Microsoft has an interest in making sure that the millions of new users become hooked on its software.

Potentially the ownership by Facebook and Google of the physical network and their control over what content Internet users have access to, seems to me problematic.  It has been suggested that Facebook has harvested up to 4,000 snippets of data about many users.  This is enables the company to form a profile of every individual user.  Likewise Google has the power to harvest a great deal of information from the search terms we use.

There is good evidence that Facebook was used to sway the outcome of the 2016 elections in the USA when about 77,000 voters in three states were targeted. Trump lost the popular vote by about 3 million ballots, but gained the presidency because the make up of the electoral college had been influenced via Facebook. Not all African leaders are models of integrity and defenders of democracy.

https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/fln36fd-soc-2016election/facebook-and-the-2016-election-the-facebook-dilemma/

Another issue is that Europe in particular has gone a long way to recognising the importance of personal privacy and protection of personal data.  This is not the case in other countries and many African states may have legal systems which are very weak in this regard.  Facebook and Google will only respect these issues if they are made to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

https://www.contagious.com/news-and-views/shoshana-zuboff-on-the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism

We are familiar with the term ‘Scramble for Africa’ which refers to the invasion, occupation, colonisation and annexation of African territories by European countries in the period 1880 to 1914.  Are we about to see this process happening again, but this time led not by nation states.  Has colonialism been privatised?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scramble_for_Africa

(I struggled to determine the exact ownership of ‘Opera’.  It may be owned by a Chinese private equity firm or it may still be Norwegian.  I am not sure which of these is correct.)

Author's Note:  

Les May said...

In the above piece I suggested that many African states which may have legal system that are weak with respect to personal privacy and data protection, and that Facebook and Google will be in a position to take advantage of this.

A report by several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) published today (18 June) highlights the problems facing a country, Nigeria, which had weak laws regarding the protection of the environment, which was taken advantage of by Shell. So polluted by oil contamination is the water supply for people living in the delta of the Niger that the cannot by any reasonable standards be said to have access to a clean water supply.

https://cloud.foeeurope.org/index.php/s/LyqrCFskx2RRdcf#pdfviewer

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/nigeria-shell-still-failing-clean-pollution-niger-delta

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Tommy Robinson & Anthropological strangeness in the Green Room

  Panorama’s John Sweeney puts his foot in it!

BILLY Holiday sang 'Strange Fruit on the Poplar Trees' about the hangings by the Ku Klux Klan of negros in the Deep South in the USA.  Similarly, Panorama journalist John Sweeney in an moment of gay abandon described how he encountered a proletarian in the Green Room while he was working on 'some film on Newnight'.  And it was so rare, he says, 'to meet a white working class male in the newsnight green room' that he and one of his mates 'went down there to have a drink with him'.

Pity Mr. Sweeney didn't realise that curiousity killed the cat.  For the tedious Tommy Robinson, who fancies himself as an investigative  journalist, was then able to entrap poor John by the short and curlies.  Somehow Tommy Robinson caught him out as saying 'it was so unusual...in the way that you would do with somebody, from the, you know a CANNIBAL from the Amazonian, erm Amazonia or maybe a CREATURE from OUTER SPACE'.


The footage was posted to Robinson’s social media accounts on both Facebook and Instagram over the weekend and shows the former English Defence League leader confronting Sweeney over his comments.

As a consequence of  this the The Unity News Network now reports that 'over the last few weeks the internet has been ablaze with chatter as to how Tommy Robinson managed to snare the senior Panorama reporter John Sweeney.  In a further teaser trailer Tommy posted tonight it reveals that his ex-employee Lucy Brown was playing a double bluff with Panorama.'

Mr. Sweeney on these social media videos, cuts a Rumpole of the Bailey figure, treating a young woman to a largely liquid lunch of champange rather than red burgundy and flaming Sambuca as a digestive with the desert course.  All for £220 with or withour service charge, pressumeably all on BBC expenses.
 
Robinson has also said that the full footage will be compiled into a documentary that will be shown in Manchester on February 23rd outside of the BBC’s offices in the city. He has also revealed that he will post further footage from the documentary every 72 hours, starting on Tuesday evening.
So far, neither Sweeney, the BBC, nor HOPE Not Hate have addressed Robinson’s released footage or claims of further revelations, although HOPE not HATE senior researcher Joe Mulhall briefly locked his Twitter account following the release of the footage.

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'Where There’s Muck There’s Brass’

by Les May

THE Financial Times (FT) recently carried an editorial about Facebook which included the following;

‘The platform does not intentionally cause harm to users.  Too often, however, Facebook’s business model allows harm to occur.  The biggest problem is Facebook’s refusal to acknowledge that to a large degree it is a publisher, not just a digital town square.’

The editors of Northern Voices (NV) carry out their job under the guiding principle that freedom of speech is having the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.  But that does not mean that there is any obligation upon them to publish anything and everything that is sent to them.  As editors, they are treated by the law as the publishers of NV if, for example, someone claims they have been defamed or, an article is considered to incite violence or racial hatred. In other words if an article causes harm the actions of the editor are considered intentional.

As the FT article points out these strictures do not apply to Facebook because it claims NOT to be a publisher. In other words blogs like NV are expected to maintain higher standards in policing, and I use the word deliberately, their content for hate promoting or defamatory material, than Facebook.  Indeed Facebook benefits enormously when such material is posted on the platform because it leads to a backlash from people who disagree.  The more extreme the material, the greater the backlash, the more revenue it generates for Facebook.

The eagerness with which some people resort to calling something ‘hate speech’ or ‘hate crime’ whenever something is said or done which they do not like, only serves to obscure the real problem which is that some Facebook groups use the platform to incite hatred of, and violence toward, other ethnic groups. This played a part in the events in Myanmar where Rohingya and other muslims were targeted and the violence at Charlottesville.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/myanmar-facebook-hate/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html

There’s an expectation that Facebook will act against the white-supremacist and neo-nazi groups which orchestrated the violence at Charlottesville. (In this case I think the use of the word ‘nazi’ is justified.)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/25/charlottesville-white-supremacists-big-tech-failure-remove

And who could object if they did take down these posts when and wherever they occurred?  The people posting this stuff are well beyond the pale.  A war was fought to rid the world of ideologies like these.

But wait a minute.  As I have written previously the bar for what constitutes hate speech or a hate crime is constantly being lowered.  Do we really trust a private company to decide what is acceptable?  Do we really trust any government to do it? Here’s why I don’t.

The people who run Twitter have published policies about what constitutes hateful conduct here.

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/hateful-conduct-policy

Scroll down a bit and you’ll find the line, ‘This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.’

In other words if you genuinely believe that someone with a full set of wedding tackle does not qualify to be considered a woman, just because he says he is, you’ll be contravening Twitter’s policies unless you refer to him as ‘she’.

Recently a panel of five judges sitting as the Supreme Court gave a ruling which reinforces our right to free speech and ensures that we cannot be forced to express views that we disagree with.  This was a case in which a Christian couple declined to supply a cake decorated with the words ‘Support Gay Marriage’.

http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/let-them-eat-cake.html

Twitter disagrees; if you want to use the platform the price you may have to pay is being forced to express a view you disagree with.  Canadian freelance journalist, Meghan Murphy, has been permanently banned for allegedly ‘deadnaming’ a trans person.  When discussing a story of a trans woman who was taking a bunch of beauticians to court for refusing to wax his balls, she used the phrase ‘yeah it’s him’.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/11/28/meghan-murphy-and-the-silencing-of-women/

Following the ‘gay wedding cake’ ruling the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said:

‘Freedom of expression – including the right not to express a view – and freedom of belief are rightfully protected in a democratic society and this case demonstrates the need for a more nuanced debate about how we balance competing rights’.

A nuanced debate would lead to something between Twitter’s insistence on telling people what they must think if they want to use the platform and Facebook’s ‘we’re not a publisher’.   I doubt there will be one.

I have no axe to grind on this because I use neither Facebook nor Twitter.  And I don’t think I’m missing much!

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Lies, Damn Lies and Irony

by Les May

IT seems that nowadays we are all thought to be too stupid to understand a definition and have to be provided with an example.  Not wishing to buck the trend I give you an example.

It appeared on the Facebook page of the Jewish Studies professor Jerry Haber.  After he examined the proper context of what Corbyn had said by going back to the text of the speech by Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Authority representative to the UK, which Corbyn was referencing and which led to the ludicrous outburst from Jonathan Sacks.

— Did you hear that Jeremy Corbyn, in a speech in 2013, said that British Jews weren’t really British even if they were born there?

— Really?  He said that?

— Well, he intimated that British Jews couldn’t grasp English irony and didn’t understand history.”

— Really?  He was referring to Jews?

— Well, he didn’t SAY Jews, but he said that about UK Zionists, which is a leftwing code term for British Jews.

— Hang on, he made a reference to UK Zionists as a group?

— Well, not exactly.  Actually, he was referring to some pro-Israel members of the audience who came up and started arguing with the Palestinian ambassador who had presented the history of Palestine and used irony when he said, 'You know I’m reaching the conclusion that the Jews are the children of God, the only children of God and the Promised Land is being paid by God!  I have started to believe this because nobody is stopping Israel building its messianic dream of Eretz Israel to the point I believe that maybe God is on their side. Maybe God is partial on this issue.' which apparently some of the Zionists thought he meant without irony (We do not have a transcript of what they said).  And Corbyn referred to ‘the Zionists in the audience’.

— So, you mean to say he did not refer to British Zionists as a whole, but he was saying that the Palestinian ambassador, who is Armenian Palestinian, had a greater grasp of English irony, than these Brits who had lived in England all their lives?

— Yes, that’s about it.

— So, in effect, he accused pro-Israeli members of the audience, whom he referred to as ‘Zionists’, which they are, and who argued with the Palestinian ambassador, with being humourless and misunderstanding history, compared with the Palestinian ambassador.

— Yep.

— Well, that makes the man clearly an anti-Semite, doesn’t it?

And what does HIS interpretation make Jonathan Sacks?

Read the full story at:

  https://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/sacks-vs-corbyn/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/writingfromtheedge/2018/07/the-jewish-war-against-corbyn-risks-bringing-real-antisemitism-to-britain/

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Going off at half-cock?

by Les May

I recently came across this piece whilst researching the latest fashionable cause for whinging ‘microaggression’ .   I post it without comment.

'In 2011, a group of University of Wyoming students created a Facebook group called “UW Crushes,” where they shared anonymous declarations of attraction to one another. The police were called to investigate when one anonymous poster wrote: “I want to hatef–k Meg Lanker Simons so hard.  That chick runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn’t care who knows it.  I think its [sic] hot and it makes me angry.  One night with me and shes [sic] gonna be a good Republican bitch.'

Students who were members of the group asked the group’s administrators to remove the post.  But Lanker Simons objected:   'Actually, I want this to stay up. This is disgusting, misogynistic, and apparently something the admins of this page think is a perfectly acceptable sentiment.'  She continued: ‘Even if it is taken down, I’m left to wonder if there’s someone out there with a violent fantasy about me—and likely other women.’

Police later determined that the post was a hoax and that the threat had been written by Meg Lanker Simons herself. Before the police arrived at this conclusion, a rally against ‘rape culture’ had been held at the university.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/war-on-dignity/

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Faking the News on Facebook?

By Les May

IN the distant days of my youth my two primary modes of entertainment were listening to the radio and reading books from Rochdale library.  The former gave me a liking for the music of Django Reinhardt plus a detailed knowledge of the deeds, and misdeeds, of the Forsyte family.   The latter gave me memorable book titles like ‘Winston Churchill’s Toyshop’ and accounts of the doings of characters like Sefton Delmer.

As soon as I heard of the appearance of anti-Semitic messages on Facebook pages set up by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, I thought of Delmer, or at least of his spiritual heirs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefton_Delmer

In the autumn of 1940, Delmer was recruited by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) to organize radio broadcasts to Nazi Germany.   The twist in the story was that the broadcasts would undermine Hitler by pretending to originate from fervent Nazi supporters complaining about the way that he was being let down by his underlings.  Pretending to be something you are not and using that as a disguise to undermine your opponent, was Delmer’s forte.

A modern day Sefton Delmer would not need anything so crude or expensive as a 600kW medium wave transmitter to spread discord. In fact his intended victims would open the door and welcome him in by making him a Facebook ‘friend’ without for one moment knowing who he is.  Once ‘inside’ what is easier than to post anti-Semitic messages to discredit not just Corbyn, but all Corbyn supporters.

If this sounds a little far fetched check out these websites all of which offer ‘aged’ Facebook accounts to anyone with the cash to buy.

https://fbaccs.com/

https://pandasmm.com/buy-social-accounts/buy-facebook-accounts/

https://buyaccs.com/en/buy-bulk-facebook-accounts.php

Whenever Israel and the Palestinians decide to have a go at each other the war isn’t just fought with guns and bullets and the PBI, it’s also fought on social media like Facebook and Twitter, by each side’s cyber-soldiers.  In time we shall no doubt find out whether Russia really did influence the outcome of the Brexit referendum and/or the US presidential election by similar means.

Labour’s superior ability in using social media to get its message across has been been credited with helping to dramatically slash the Tory’s majority at the last election.  Now it is learning that there is no such thing as a free lunch.  Your opponents can play dirty, and they may just be doing it.    

Anyone for ‘snail mail’?

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Another 'Arab Spring' in Tunisia?

A 'Second Revolt' at El Kamour

COULD an encampment of tents outside a pumping station on the edge of the Sahara in Tunisia be the sign of another Arab Spring?  A second revolution perhaps?

It seems that owing to the impatience of thousands of young people fed-up with poverty and unemployment, protests have broken out and attempts have been made to close down the main oil pipeline at El Kamour.  There have been confrontations with the National Guard, which tried to burn down the protest camp on May 22nd.

Since then a police station was burned down, and one demonstrator was killed.

It's now six years since the revolution that brought down Tunisa's 23-year-old dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.

The current protests reflect the frustration with the broken promises of the new democratic leaders who have failed to create tangible improvements in the poor regions.

It seems that the demonstrators reflect the spirit of the new generation that has grown up in an age of relative freedom, only now to face the prospect of long-term unemployment.

Well educated out-of-work graduates have now formed a movement in towns and villages throughout Tunisia.  The demonstrator's main demand is jobs.

The government has claimed the demonstrators are linked to terrorists or are being used by the mafia.  

In the desert camps, some 125 miles south of Tataoine, 200 protestors were on a vigil watching the pipeline that remained shut off.  They said that they would stay until the government accepted their 17 demands they had presented to the government.

In Tataouine, the demonstrators were reported to be in control of the streets.  The New York Times journalist, Carlotta Gall reported that they were camp outside the governor's office and at main intersections.  She wrote:  'in scenes reminiscent of the popular uprisings of 2010 and 2011 remnants of burned tires still blocked parts of the roads'

The governor resigned last Tuesday and left town.  The demonstrators have organised mostly on Facebook.  They have avoided the main-stream Tunisian media.